Blog for October 23rd
After creating my PBWiki for my LW teachers, I soon was able to use the YackPak feature on PBwiki to communicate with my teachers as well as give them the opportunity to do the same. I really enjoy the feature, as it seems to provide me with more streamlined communication. I talked one of my groups into trying it, but they seemed to prefer the Chatting option on PBwiki. Part of it, I think, had to do with the comfort they felt in 'broadcasting' their own voices. As we know, most adolescents have a high level of self-consciousness and they struggled with sending a message out without being able to look at and edit it first, like you can when chatting and texting; especially in relation to the academic endeavors they are embarking on for this LW experience. Overall, I would certainly use the YackPak feature to meet with my teachers, to meet with my colleagues, and to meet with any group I may be working with. I enjoy the ease of which it works and the clarity of the sound.
During my teaching internship at CrossWinds in Woodbury, part of our weekly teaching assignment was to meet with our small groups online through TappedIn. Since we were only seeing our students once a week outside of this, it was exciting to have the opportunity to chat with them one other time during the week. Each week there was a day and a time assigned which we were to log in from home (or wherever) and the students would log on from school and we were to have an online lesson/interaction related to the assignment we had given them in our prior meeting. Sounds like a good idea, no? Well, I think it could of been but it certainly did not pan out that way. In order for this to work, we needed time with the kids to actually show them how to use TappedIn. Every week it would take over 10 minutes for the kids to log in, 10 minutes for them to find us (their assigned teachers), and then another few minutes to locate the actual chat window, which often would disappear under the main window. It was a disaster. By the time we would finally connect, we would have between 5-10 minutes to chat - needless to say the typing skills of my middle schoolers did not allow for much to occur during this time.
I considered using TappedIn for the work with my LW teachers, but after being introduced to PBwiki I definitely saw the ease that I did not find with TappedIn. Given more time to explore TappedIn I might be able to improve my opinion of it, but for now I have no problem taking a couple year hiatus from the program.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
My Other Teaching Gig...
Blog for October 16th
Outside of the teaching and curriculum writing I do, I spend a lot of time providing pitching lessons for area high school fastpitch pitchers. Basically my goal is to improve, expand, and increase their ability and knowledge of pitching. While I get to work with each pitcher about 2 hours a week, there are many more hours spent outside of this time thinking about drills, philosophy, etc., that could improve each pitcher's performance.
Both on Flickr and YouTube I found extensive resources I could use to help my pitchers improve. While I do my best to try and explain mechanics, philosophy, etc., sometimes it works better to hear the same message in a variety of different ways. Flickr had great photos of pitching styles and positions, as I displayed in my Flickr slideshow. YouTube seemed to have endless videos of pitching drills that reemphasized many of the things I am already telling my players.
The most important part of becoming a good pitcher is really UNDERSTANDING what it is you are doing. It is one thing to master the mechanics, it is a completely different thing to understand when, where, why, and how to use each pitch, how to modify the mechanics to set-up the batter, and develop the mental strength to become the best in the game. Looking at these different resources and reading in the Wysocki book really made me think of different ways I could use a pitching blog to enhance the lessons I am providing for my pitchers. One great idea I came up with after reading some of Selfe's assignments would be to post some video/pictures of pitchers who were using poor technique for different pitches. I would have my pitchers go to the blog, evaluate what they think could be better and then embark on a mission to find pictures and video that illustrate GOOD form and technique. Through this journey they would be certain to find other pitching drill videos that they could evaluate and learn from. Yeah! This seems like it could be a wonderful supplement to the help I am providing them. And I could post their workouts here as well, corresponding with the pitches and techniques we are working on that week!
Outside of the teaching and curriculum writing I do, I spend a lot of time providing pitching lessons for area high school fastpitch pitchers. Basically my goal is to improve, expand, and increase their ability and knowledge of pitching. While I get to work with each pitcher about 2 hours a week, there are many more hours spent outside of this time thinking about drills, philosophy, etc., that could improve each pitcher's performance.
Both on Flickr and YouTube I found extensive resources I could use to help my pitchers improve. While I do my best to try and explain mechanics, philosophy, etc., sometimes it works better to hear the same message in a variety of different ways. Flickr had great photos of pitching styles and positions, as I displayed in my Flickr slideshow. YouTube seemed to have endless videos of pitching drills that reemphasized many of the things I am already telling my players.
The most important part of becoming a good pitcher is really UNDERSTANDING what it is you are doing. It is one thing to master the mechanics, it is a completely different thing to understand when, where, why, and how to use each pitch, how to modify the mechanics to set-up the batter, and develop the mental strength to become the best in the game. Looking at these different resources and reading in the Wysocki book really made me think of different ways I could use a pitching blog to enhance the lessons I am providing for my pitchers. One great idea I came up with after reading some of Selfe's assignments would be to post some video/pictures of pitchers who were using poor technique for different pitches. I would have my pitchers go to the blog, evaluate what they think could be better and then embark on a mission to find pictures and video that illustrate GOOD form and technique. Through this journey they would be certain to find other pitching drill videos that they could evaluate and learn from. Yeah! This seems like it could be a wonderful supplement to the help I am providing them. And I could post their workouts here as well, corresponding with the pitches and techniques we are working on that week!
Coordinating 26 Young Adults
Blog Post for October 9th
SYP is off to a good start, but it certainly is a challenge to get 8 teams of teachers, totaling 26 young people, to coordinate in planning a lesson every two weeks. One of my team teaching groups consists of a 9th grade MPS student, an 11th grade Blake student, and a junior at St. Olaf college. Needless to say, holding an actual meeting in physical proximity is out of the question. Sometimes it feels like a logistical nightmare. My new solution? Using PBWiki! (learningworks.pbwiki.com)
I realize all of my student teachers are busy - school, college planning, graduation planning, etc. Given two weeks to plan one 90-minute lesson, basically formulated by myself and just needing creative input, and 24 hour access to one another, I am excited about the possibilities for collaboration amongst my teachers.
Another great use for the wiki would be to have my a separate wiki in which my teachers could create a "Best LW Teaching Practices" sort of wikibook. I really enjoyed looking at Matt Barton's wikibook he created with a ton of collaboration. Often times at LW, I feel we are telling the student's the "best ways" to teach our students, when often the best advice and recommendations would come from the previous teachers. This is definitely something I am going to look in to.
SYP is off to a good start, but it certainly is a challenge to get 8 teams of teachers, totaling 26 young people, to coordinate in planning a lesson every two weeks. One of my team teaching groups consists of a 9th grade MPS student, an 11th grade Blake student, and a junior at St. Olaf college. Needless to say, holding an actual meeting in physical proximity is out of the question. Sometimes it feels like a logistical nightmare. My new solution? Using PBWiki! (learningworks.pbwiki.com)
I realize all of my student teachers are busy - school, college planning, graduation planning, etc. Given two weeks to plan one 90-minute lesson, basically formulated by myself and just needing creative input, and 24 hour access to one another, I am excited about the possibilities for collaboration amongst my teachers.
Another great use for the wiki would be to have my a separate wiki in which my teachers could create a "Best LW Teaching Practices" sort of wikibook. I really enjoyed looking at Matt Barton's wikibook he created with a ton of collaboration. Often times at LW, I feel we are telling the student's the "best ways" to teach our students, when often the best advice and recommendations would come from the previous teachers. This is definitely something I am going to look in to.
Information Super-judgment
Blog Post for September 18th
Part of my job as C&I Director at LearningWorks is planning the curriculum for both the summer and school year programs. While my ultimate goal is to plan a two year curriculum crossing over the four different schooling periods our students our students have at LW, this school-year-program (SYP) needed to have an autonomous feel until I am able to really get everything nailed down. Part of the SYP curriculum this year is teaching students research skills.
As a result of this plan, I found myself teaching my teachers to teach the students to conduct productive and valid searches on the internet. I was surprised by the lack of knowledge even some of my older teachers seemed to lack.
In the Beach, Anson, Burech, and Swiss book, there is an extensive look at modeling my own search strategies and also on selecting which tools to use for which processes. I will admit, my first search method is often to go straight to Google and try to find the "easy" answer. This is true, I suppose, except for when writing a large research paper - in which case, I utilize my University resources and do searches of academic journals. Clearly I can not ask my middle school students to go into an academic journal and try to pick out journal articles to apply to any sort of knowledge quest or research they may be conducting. Even for most of my high school teachers, this task would be over their heads.
Even after trying to work with my teachers on how to aid your students in conducting research, one group in particular reported back that they had a difficult time getting students to conduct "good" research. What they found is that the middle school students had a hard time summarizing the information they were looking at. They would go to a page and want the title to be the main subject of the article, not wanting to look through it or take the time to take notes. After some brainstorming with my teaching group, we realized that if we had the given time, using a good Blog search and specific topics would help in narrowing the wide array of information the students were trying to navigate. Using a tool such as Google Blog search and then setting up a Bloglines account for each student would allow them to predict what the underlying theme of the article they were looking at should be. From there, summarizing the information would already have a context within what they were looking for. We will see if they utilize this option, and then see how it goes!
Part of my job as C&I Director at LearningWorks is planning the curriculum for both the summer and school year programs. While my ultimate goal is to plan a two year curriculum crossing over the four different schooling periods our students our students have at LW, this school-year-program (SYP) needed to have an autonomous feel until I am able to really get everything nailed down. Part of the SYP curriculum this year is teaching students research skills.
As a result of this plan, I found myself teaching my teachers to teach the students to conduct productive and valid searches on the internet. I was surprised by the lack of knowledge even some of my older teachers seemed to lack.
In the Beach, Anson, Burech, and Swiss book, there is an extensive look at modeling my own search strategies and also on selecting which tools to use for which processes. I will admit, my first search method is often to go straight to Google and try to find the "easy" answer. This is true, I suppose, except for when writing a large research paper - in which case, I utilize my University resources and do searches of academic journals. Clearly I can not ask my middle school students to go into an academic journal and try to pick out journal articles to apply to any sort of knowledge quest or research they may be conducting. Even for most of my high school teachers, this task would be over their heads.
Even after trying to work with my teachers on how to aid your students in conducting research, one group in particular reported back that they had a difficult time getting students to conduct "good" research. What they found is that the middle school students had a hard time summarizing the information they were looking at. They would go to a page and want the title to be the main subject of the article, not wanting to look through it or take the time to take notes. After some brainstorming with my teaching group, we realized that if we had the given time, using a good Blog search and specific topics would help in narrowing the wide array of information the students were trying to navigate. Using a tool such as Google Blog search and then setting up a Bloglines account for each student would allow them to predict what the underlying theme of the article they were looking at should be. From there, summarizing the information would already have a context within what they were looking for. We will see if they utilize this option, and then see how it goes!
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